Teams, leagues, and venue owners typically charge advertisers increased fees when their banners or signs appear periodically during portions of a sports telecast. Sporting events have long provided for additional advertising revenue generation during a telecast event as well as during commercial breaks. For example, broadcasters charge a fee per on-air time to advertisers having commercials viewed during portions of a sporting event telecast. Advertisers are often charged fees related to the on-air time in the telecast that viewers may see advertisement logos and banners common in sporting arenas and parks. For example, the walls of a baseball field are commonly comprised of numerous adjacent panels, one or more of which are typically leased to advertisers for display of an advertiser logo. Ice hockey also includes advertising banners typically displayed on the dasher boards of the hockey rink as well as beneath the ice itself. In addition, football fields often include sponsor logos painted on the football field in addition to logos on the stadium walls. Sporting franchises and sporting broadcasters also use rotating banner advertisements. These banner advertisements, rather than being fixed for the duration of a broadcast, are maintained on a rotatable chassis that allows different wall panel advertisements to be displayed during the game. A broadcaster may be interested in measuring portions of images that are displayed during a broadcast of the video.
One incentive for inserting images into video is for realizing enhanced or additional advertising revenue for television broadcasters. Many systems and methods have been proposed for inserting static and dynamic images, such as advertising, into video in real time. These prior art systems and methods suffer from various drawbacks and problems, many of which are detailed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,892,554 to DiCicco, et al. A newly developed technique promises to revolutionize advertising in, for example, sporting event broadcasts. Computer facilitated broadcast systems are able to insert images, for example a graphic image of an advertiser's banner, into a video stream telecast. Generally, a site from which a telecast is to be performed has a three-dimensional model made thereof. The model includes target areas for insertion of graphic or video images. The target areas may be real areas of the site, for example a dasher board of a hockey rink, or may be imaginary surfaces, for example synthetic billboards. Generally, each frame of the video transmission is analyzed and images written into the target areas in any frames containing the target areas being broadcast. A three-dimensional model of the site allows for realism to be obtained during various camera orientations and focus.
Broadcasters must be able to determine the on-air duration of advertisements physically present or inserted into the video stream. Unfortunately, techniques for measuring an exposure time for these images during a telecast suffer from many disadvantages. For example, the duration of the broadcast of physical signage is calculated manually, and typically only after the broadcast has been performed. Manual calculation of the telecast transmission time, or on-air time, of an advertisement is generally performed by an operator, using accrued measurement techniques such as a hand-actuated stopwatch. This method is subject to a multitude of errors and inaccuracies, including failures in operator attentiveness and operator delay time. Moreover, the operator performs these measurements by watching a tape of the original broadcast sometime after the broadcast has been made. These techniques also require multiple operators to watch the same or another version of the taped broadcast to make measurements for multiple advertisements. As a result, these traditional methods require large numbers of resources and suffer from measurement inaccuracies and delays which in turn limit their use.
Moreover, tariffs for advertisements are usually calculated using these prior art techniques and are typically limited to revenues that may be derived from traditional and existing banner advertisements.
The terms ‘telecast’ and ‘broadcast’ are used within the description to facilitate understanding of the invention. However, telecast and broadcast media are exemplary only. The present invention is not limited to application to television transmissions. Rather, the present invention may be used in any number of communication technologies, such as television, cable, Internet, satellite, digital theater, etc., capable of transmitting graphic media (e.g., image streams).
While the technology for providing inserted images into a video is being developed, techniques for accurately assessing advertising revenues therefrom have yet to be addressed. To implement a fair fee charging system, the duration of the broadcast of these banners is calculated manually and typically after the broadcast has been performed. Manual calculation of the telecast transmission time, or on-air time, of an advertisement is generally made by a person watching a tape of the original broadcast some time after the broadcast has been made. Often, calculation of the on-time transmission of a particular advertisement is made by such crude and error prone techniques as a simple had actuated stop-watch. Heretofore, tariffs for advertisements made according to image inserting techniques are limited to the prior art techniques utilized for traditional banner advertisers.